For what must have felt like an eternity, Elfyn Evans feared history was repeating itself yet again.
At 3.05pm local time in Sardinia on Sunday, Evans could only stand and watch as another world rally title looked to be slipping from his grasp.
Evans was preparing in his head yet another runners-up speech – it would be his sixth – as he waited for Oliver Solberg to cross the finish line and be crowned world champion.
How could this be happening again?
Of the five previous times he had been championship runner-up, three had been decided on the final day and twice after he had taken a lead into the final event.
But at 3.06pm, for once the motor-racing gods were on his side.
With just two turns to go on the final stage of the final round and with victory in sight, Solberg somehow careered off the track into the Sardinian sand to hand Evans his first world title.
In the most dramatic of finishes, the 37-year-old from north Wales became the first British winner of the of the World Rally Championship (WRC) in 25 years.
Only two British men had taken the title since the WRC’s 1977 inception, matching the exploits of legendary pair Colin McRae (1995) and Richard Burns (2001).
Louise Aitken-Walker was Britain’s first world champion when WRC ran a women’s version in 1990.
PHILADELPHIA — Safety Kam Curl did not see it happen initially because he was on the Rams sideline teasing the Philadelphia Eagles about what he thought was his team’s certain victory.
Punter and holder Ethan Evans had a close-up view of the first part, but could not stop the second.
Quarterback Matthew Stafford, an 18th-year pro, said he had never witnessed a game-ending play like it.
Those were just a few of the memories from Rams players when asked about last season’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field.
Minutes after the Eagles blocked a late field-goal attempt, the Rams lined up for another one on the final play. Jordan Davis of the Eagles leaped and blocked the kick, scooped the ball and returned it 61 yards for a touchdown that sent the Rams to a 33-26 defeat.
“All I heard was ‘boom, boom,’” Curl said of the kick and subsequent block, “and then I looked and it was all bad from there.”
Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Jordan Davis prepares to pick up a loose ball after blocked field-goal attempt against the Rams on Sept. 21, 2025.
And they arrive with several special teams units that remain a concern for a star-studded team that opened the season as the overwhelming favorite to win Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium.
Not that the Rams have looked the part.
They lost their opener against the San Francisco 49ers in Australia, rebounded with a victory over the New York Giants, and last Sunday blew a 16-0 halftime lead in a 30-26 loss to the Denver Broncos in Denver.
Now they play an Eagles team coming off a 27-7 defeat by the Chicago Bears.
Late last season, coach Sean McVay fired special teams coordinator Chase Blackburn, and Ben Kotwica served as interim coordinator for the final two games. During the offseason, McVay hired Bubba Ventrone, who had coordinated special teams for the Indianapolis Colts and Cleveland Browns.
They also signed veteran long-snapper Joe Cardona and linebacker Grant Stuard, a special teams veteran.
The Rams’ field-goal unit is seemingly in a better place than it was last season.
Kicker Harrison Mevis replaced Joshua Karty several games after the debacle against the Eagles. He made 18 of 19 field-goal attempts in nine regular-season games and the playoffs, and has made four of five attempts this season, including two against the Broncos.
The Rams have improved in “that particular phase,” McVay said, “but you have to do it again” against a formidable Eagles field-goal block unit.
“That certainly is not anything we’re taking for granted,” McVay said.
On the same day the Rams lost to the Eagles last season, Ventrone was coaching for the Browns, who blocked a field-goal attempt by the Green Bay Packers with less than 30 seconds left, and then won the game with a field goal.
“It comes down to execution and playing with good fundamentals in those areas,” Ventrone said. “If we can do that, then we’ll be in a better spot.”
While the field-goal unit has mostly thrived, Evans has struggled with consistency, specifically directional placement of his kicks. On Friday, the Rams waived punt returner Xavier Smith, who fumbled in last season’s NFC championship game and made several decision-making errors against the Broncos. Alex Bachman will return punts against the Eagles, McVay said.
The kickoff coverage unit gave up a long return against the 49ers but appears to have improved.
The Rams will need solid performances from the offense, defense and special teams if they hope to defeat the Eagles for only the second time in eight games under McVay.
The Rams would be going for the second consecutive victory over the Eagles had they not blown a 19-point third-quarter lead and had two kicks blocked last season.
The Rams trailed 27-26 when they lined up for a 44-yard attempt with three seconds left.
“You knew it was going to be the last play no matter what,” Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula said. “You weren’t going to [overtime]. I think I put my headset down.
“You put everything away and you’re like, ‘All right, here we go. This kick is going to decide my mood for this next week.’”
Evans recalled that after Davis blocked Karty’s kick, the ball went over Evans’ head. He attempted to dive on the ball, but he was hit in the back.
“By the time I got up and looked,” Evans said, “[Davis] was already in the end zone.”
The Rams aim to avoid a repeat.
Curl said the formula for success was simple. And it applied for offense, defense and special teams.
A revamp of the points system for 2025 was welcomed by Evans; it also brought his tightest title race yet.
After second place to Ogier in the Monte Carlo curtain-raiser, the re-energised Welshman won in Sweden and Kenya – rallies the Frenchman sat out.
With a 36-point advantage, Evans had opened up the largest championship lead ever recorded after three rounds of a WRC campaign.
But he would not win again that season and though he never finished lower than sixth, Ogier gradually whittled away at his lead until it came down to just three points with one round to go.
That race was a brand new entry to the calendar, and there was uncertainty over what lay ahead at Rally Saudi Arabia.
The terrain proved brutal for all the drivers. Tyre problems galore saw the leaderboard shifting like the sand. It ended with Ogier in third and Evans in sixth.
The points-swing was seven. The Frenchman had won a record-equalling ninth WRC title by four points, and Evans had fallen just short for the fifth time in six years.
“We’ve done what we can, that’s it,” was his reaction.
“We’re competitors at the end of the day, we always want better, we always want more.”
The staging is simple. A circle of nine stately wood chairs on a bare stage. Four actors, affixed with in-ear monitors, occupy different seats as testimony is elicited, provided and undermined.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is back in session in “The Ford/Hill Project,” now at REDCAT through Saturday. What follows is some of the most riveting and distressing testimony ever delivered in such a setting.
Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford are called back to testify under oath about the Supreme Court nominations of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, respectively. This documentary drama, created by Elizabeth Marvel and director Lee Sunday Evans, is composed from the verbatim transcripts of these painful proceedings.
In 1991, Hill testified that Thomas had repeatedly sexually harassed her when he was her supervisor at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education. In 2018, Ford testified that she had been sexually assaulted in 1982 by a 17-year-old Kavanaugh when she was 15.
Marvel and Evans create a double helix from excerpts of these two hearings, which are separated by nearly 30 years yet reveal highly entrenched patriarchal patterns. Two women, summoning the courage to tell what they know about two men who are about to be entrusted with the most consequential governmental power, are put through the wringer as the political machine shifts into gear.
The actors wear in-ear monitors that feed them edited clips from the real audio of the hearings.
(Angel Origgi / REDCAT)
Marvel, one of the treasures of New York theater, takes on the role of Ford at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a run that ends Sunday. (The piece premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2024.) At REDCAT, the superb Rosemarie DeWitt assumes Marvel’s place, standing in for Ford but never attempting anything as crass as an impersonation.
The production, under Evans’ precise direction, manages to find a tone that might be paradoxically described as emotionally resonant neutrality. Those in-ear monitors that the actors are wearing feed them edited clips from the real audio of the hearings.
Ford, a psychology professor with an expertise in biostatistics, answers prosecutorial questions about a life-altering trauma in a manner that leans on her scientific training for security. Hill, a Yale-educated lawyer asked to elaborate on the prurient conduct she was chronically subjected to at work, never loses her professional composure.
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” Ford tells Sen. Patrick Leahy when asked about the strongest memory she has of the incident. (Ford’s voice, resounding at the start of the production, keeps the brutality of the assault at the forefront of our minds.)
Hill, played by Betty Gabriel, describes the threatening nature of the unwanted advances that created such a toxic work environment. Aware of the damage that Thomas could inflict on her young career, Hill was determined to do what she could to salvage an extraordinary legal opportunity.
At times during Thursday’s performance, Gabriel appeared to stumble on her lines, but it was hard to tell because Hill is speaking extempore in the most difficult of public forums and she doubles back on her sentences, carefully parsing out her words. What both DeWitt and Gabriel honor exquisitely in their performances is the quiet integrity of these women as they willingly expose themselves to political attacks for the sake of causes greater than themselves — the truth, first and foremost, but also gender equality and the Senate’s advisory role as a cornerstone of American democracy.
The actors change not only their seats but also their roles.
(Angel Origgi / REDCAT)
Dulé Hill channels the presence of Thomas, who eventually theatrically hijacks the hearing by referring to the experience as a “high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks.” Rich Sommer gives us the voice of Kavanaugh extolling the pleasures of beer and barking at senators who pointedly ask about the extent of his drinking.
The actors change not only their seats but also their roles. The interrogated become the interrogators in a way that gets a little blurry when the focus initially shifts from Hill and Ford to Thomas and Kavanaugh. But the murkiness doesn’t last long in a production that achieves an admirable balance between objectivity and emotion, abstraction and representation.
The restraint imposed by the production adds to its power. There’s no need to editorialize. The proceedings skewer themselves.
When Sen. Alan Simpson quotes from “Othello” in defense of Thomas, he uses Shakespeare’s lyrical authority but fails to realize that he is in fact invoking the false words of the tragedy’s villain, Iago. Not that the easily impressed senators, eager to exculpate a favored man, took note of the irony.
The patriarchy cares mostly about shoring up its own power. Thomas and Kavanaugh were part of the Supreme Court majority that voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
The ending, the only time when Evans’ direction loses its poise, blares “make it right,” performed by the Tune-Yards, as Thomas and Kavanaugh, adorning themselves in black robes, find their seated place according to seniority among the nine chairs. The theatrical flourish seems jarring, but so too is the historic moment.
“The Ford/Hill Project” filled me with sadness but not despair. The bravery of Hill, who educated a nation on sexual harassment, and the emotional strength of Ford, who bared her trauma for public enlightenment, live on in the American consciousness as it progresses, in fits and starts, toward justice.
